PS4 Hahn Solo, part 5

[ladyabaxa]

There's only one section of game left to go after running around Rykros. That's right, it was time for The Grind.

As with Raja I went for maximum time efficiency (and pain reduction) by putting Chaz into the party, setting up macros, and then killing off Chaz. The macros were for Thunder Claw, Astral, Tornado Dagger, and finally Nazan. Nazan was good at taking out groups of VopalSpheres and Browrens. The Thunder Claw would deal with other bots or if a small group of Browrens appeared as they weren't worth the 16 TP cost to use Nazan. The Tornado Dagger didn't see much use but was there anyway in case some Browrens survived Nazan and/or got a Barrier up. Hahn couldn't do much about Life Deleters except use the Swift Helm and hope to Thunder Claw/Astral them down without being paralyzed (he was often killed, though). Damn you Stasis Ball!

Before the grind Hahn had a little matter to attend to. Acquiring Elsydeon flags the game to start a cutscene as soon as the player enters the spaceport on Dezolis. This is quite an important cutscene as it not only brings all the optional characters (except Seth) to the Motavian spaceport for use in the endgame but it also overwrites all their equipment with new stuff. Since I didn't want what Hahn was wearing to be eaten (some will be sold) I made sure to take all that stuff off before walking into the spaceport.

As a side note Hahn's defense power sans gear is quite obviously equal to his agility.

Then the grinding began.

After several hours Hahn was back in the spaceport. He was level 99 with some rather respectable stats. Comparing his stats to Raja, Hahn ended up with 10 less strength, 3 less Mental (purely off of equipment differences), and 5 more agility. Since he had a knife equipped he also had 3 less defense. Finally, Hahn ended up with 1,591,351 less experience needed because of his reduced xp-per-level table. (He also ended up with half the amount of meseta Raja had after buying up Sol Dews amid-grinding.)

The agility is a good sign right off the bat. Raja had a 99% rate of winning initiative with 83 agility. Hahn with 88 agility should have no problems going first every round. That means he doesn't need to equip or use the Swift Helm. I did opt to go for the Plasma Field instead of the Mahlay Shield. The Mahlay Shield was still in Hahn's inventory for its useful single-person Deban use-as-item effect but in poring over the Profound Darkness's attacks I decided it was more useful to get the Plasma Field's factor 2 resistance.

The Mahlay Shield does provide factor 7 resistance but the only factor 7 ability any form of the Profound Darkness has is the second form's Light Shower and that doesn't do enough damage to warrant concern. On the other hand all forms have some form of factor 2 attack. The first form has Ray Breath and the other two inflict energy damage with their basic physical attacks. So while using the Plasma Field would cost Hahn 10 defense they both have the same magic defense bonus (12) and the multiplier change from the Plasma Field struck me as the better defensive deal.

With that said, it was go time!

Hahn made his way through The Edge and engaged the Profound Darkness in what I intended to be a test run to make sure my overall strategy was solid. Since Hahn definitely did not have the reserves to nuke the final boss to death and attacking would deal more damage then the Tornado Dagger, Flame Sword, or Thunder Claw his first action was to use the Power Shield for an attack boost, then Vision for a Dexterity boost.

Shadow Breath still very much hurt. Hahn may have over 500 max health but those 220-230ish shots still added up quickly. To conserve Sol Dews I had Hahn Nares himself when his health was low enough to be in Shadow Breath's threat range but still above 100. If he was below 100 I used a Sol Dew.

But at least with his buffs in place Hahn could return in kind. It wasn't necessarily great damage but it was good to see Hahn actually get to attack a boss and make progress.

For the first form the Plasma Field did as expected and knocked every Ray Breath down to single digit scratch damage.

Hahn still had some close calls such as a Shadow Breath that dropped him to 5 hit points. Thank you Sol Dews for restoring characters to max health!

As soon as the Profound Darkness transformed Hahn pulled out the Mahlay Shield to give himself a defense boost.

No sooner than he did but the Profound Darkness tried to spit energy all over him for 1 damage. The Plasma Field was again doing its job.

Form 2 is really never much of a threat to a non-android and this was no change. Distortion and Another Gate chipped off health easily recovered with Nares and Sol Dews.
 

Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFdz8REpKC4

The first two stages, in video form.

That brought Hahn to the final form with 481 tech points still in the tank. If he dumped all of those into Nawats that would rack up 11k damage (assuming an average of 220 damage per Nawat). The third form has 12999 hit points so things looked good, so long as Hahn could survive. Wanting to keep hold of those precious tech points I went with Hahn's staple, Astral, to lead the offensive - all 30 charges. Yes, they would trade energy attacks with Hahn hiding behind his shielding while thumbing his nose at the primordial evil of Algol.

Because he's a biologist. That's just how things are done on Motavia.

As I mentioned with Raja Megid is not an energy/factor 2 attack. It is actually factor 6 which is a convenient way of making sure the player can't resist it besides with raw magic defense.

The Plasma Field continued to do well when combined with the buffs Hahn still had active. It is quite a sight to see the Profound Darkness deal 1 damage with what is normally a serious physical attack. After the first Cancelling I was wondering whether Hahn would actually need the Mahlay Shield's Deban effect and the Profound Darkness promptly confirmed that yes, it was necessary, by cranking out a solid 172 damage hit. That Deban was only a 64 point boost but Hahn couldn't afford to play risky.

I didn't bother with a Psy Shield and Evil Eye continued to work every time it was used. I fully expected the test run to end at any moment because of it.

Once Hahn was out of Astral charges it was time to attack with his little dagger and Nawat. Knowing that Hahn was probably going to have to use his knife for part of the fight I should have led with melee attacks rather than Astral to get as much benefit from the Power Shield's attack boost before it was inevitably Cancelled. That would have been the efficient thing to do and probably would have shortened the battle by a couple of rounds.

I was aggressive about refreshing Deban every time Hahn was Cancelled and it paid off twice. Both times Hahn was put to sleep with Evil Eye and suffered multiple-round barrages. Once he dropped to 16 hit points and near the end he survived with 11 hit points. Both times he awoke at critical health, doused himself in Sol Dews and carried on.

That was how Hahn managed to defeat the Profound Darkness on the first try.

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WyGQItQbfA

Here is the video conclusion of Hahn's journey.

Before we end, however, let's see more of the reclusive wildlife of Motavia! FOR SCIENCE!

For this we require the Hydrofoil as these critters live out in Motavia's oceans. First up is a Leviathan. They are not at all intimidating, actually. Their one "big" attack is Maelstrom which is a factor 1 attack targeting the entire player group with a base power of 32 and uses the Leviathan's 252 attack power as its modifier. That 252 might sound scary but in practice Maelstrom doesn't do much. The fact that it hits the whole player party is also pointless given you can only encounter Leviathans while in the Hydrofoil and they always appear one at a time.

Next up is the Hewgilla.

These weak creatures can cast Wat and Giwat and have Flood Breath. Flood Breath is a factor 1 ability with a base power of 20 and uses the Hewgilla's 154 attack power as its modifier. Like all breath abilities Flood Breath targets one person. As evidenced by the whopping 16 damage dealt to the Hydrofoil it is barely capable of scratching the paint job, let alone actually damaging our vehicle.

So Hahn blew them all up with X-Burst. All sea critters are weak to factor 7 (having a factor 7 resistance set to 04) and these Hewgilla each suffered 491 damage. The Hydrofoil might have only two shots of X-Burst but they absolutely will kill whatever is bothering it out at sea. Not that such drastic measures are generally needed. By the time the player gets the Hydrofoil they can easily run away from all encounters and there's no real reason to fight any of these things.

Lastly we have two Elmelew. These are actually more common then their weaker variant, the Hewgilla. They can use Flood Breath and Wat. That's it. They have slightly better stats and slightly worse abilities.

I think at this point the developers just didn't care what the monsters could do. This stuff very much feels like it's here just to put something out at sea to fill up the encounter table.

The curious thing about Hewgilla and Elmelew are that they are part of two, two-sprite enemy sets in the game for fishy people. The sprites are clearly closely related and all four monsters are obscure, weak, and can be hard to find if you don't know where precisely to look. We saw the Ismounos on the right back in part 1 of Hahn's run while he was in the Bio Plant. It took awhile and several characters scattered around the planets to find any Depcen.

Raja happened to still have a savestate in the village of Uzo on this tiny island on Motavia. For such an obscure enemy they are thoroughly unremarkable. They can only use Flood Breath or attack - and they couldn't hit Raja at all. (That's a statement I certainly don't get to type often!)

Before Hahn ground up to level 99 there was one challenge for him on Motavia.

He just had to try to fight a fully-powered Sandworm. Where is it? It's burrowed underground as part of its Earthquake attack.

As expected Nawat did excellent damage, hitting the Sandworm's factor 5 weakness.

Three Nawats and two Nareses later Hahn won. Well I suppose if the Motavia Academy is ever threatened by sandworms they know who to call.

Finally I did go back to see what fighting the Profound Darkness with the Mahlay Shield instead of the Plasma Field would be like. I stand by my assessment that the Plasma Field is the better option.

Ray Breath and PD2's regular attacks shoot up to the 120 - 130 damage range with the Mahlay Shield. While this isn't by itself really that big a deal (and Lightshower dropped to 1 damage due to the Mahlay Shield's factor 7 resistance) it was enough that Hahn couldn't safely expect to drop to below 100 hit points to use Sol Dews. He instead got chipped down into the threat range of other big attacks where Nares could get him back up to near full health. Hahn therefore spent more time healing and had less tech points at each form shift.

Of course Hahn didn't even got halfway through his Astral charges before an Evil Eye - Megid - Megid combo killed him.

After playing as Hahn and Raja I have to say Gryz still remains the most difficult character I've soloed the game with overall. Gryz has no way to deal damage except by equipping a big, 2-handed weapon and is completely dependent on items for healing. Rika, Hahn, and Raja may be fragile but Gires/Nares can overcome a lot if you can get their defensive options set up right! Sure Raja died a whole bunch and the early game was frustrating but he had options that only got better as he gained Mental. Rika had the Silver Tusk which made mid to late game random fights quick. Hahn had Savol and there was never any point where he couldn't fall back on Astral.

Of course I also have a certain fondness for Gryz's odyssey. It was glitchy, the game eventually broke on me, and the Xe-A-Thouls were a gigantic wall of pain but it was fun and I picked up new strats and tricks that made all the subsequent characters less painful.

Part Four | Index

Comments

[shining-armour.livejournal.com]

Very nicely done! Who will be your next solo run ?

[ladyabaxa.livejournal.com]

I'm already working on Seth.

[shining-armour.livejournal.com]

Oh.

Wow! That was so much damage from the PD 2 and 3 physical attacks! The most scariest amount of damage ever ... 1. XD

Is there a way to dodge these enemies attacks :Zio's red pillar, Dark Force 3's sword-arm, De-Vars' arm, PD2's Lightning Jaw bite thingy, and PD3's Energy Bolt and Prophallus' ray breath thingy ?

I never seen the physical attacks of Profound Darkness do so little! The lowest I ever seen before this was about 40, also what factor/element is Megid ? Fire I presume.

[ladyabaxa.livejournal.com]

Megid is factor 6/light/holy. (Yes the very final boss uses a "holy" attack)

I don't think it's possible to dodge any boss physical attacks from Gy-Laguiah on because the developers made sure they all have super-high dexterity. They assume you have Deban and Barrier from then on.

[shining-armour.livejournal.com]

Pretty sure a Seth solo would be strict, his only true damage spell is Corrision, and what level would he learn that at ? about 10 I guess.

[ladyabaxa.livejournal.com]

Seth learned corrosion at level 11. Yes it is pretty strict but that's the appeal of it to me.

At least Seth isn't as hopeless as say an FFV solo-berserker run (http://www.garath.net/Sullla/FF/berserker1.html) but Seth definitely doesn't have a whole lot of options on his table.

[shining-armour.livejournal.com]

I have noticed that about the Elemew, Hewgilla, Depcen and Ismounos, they look similar, don't do much damage, and are hard to locate, the Elemew and Hews appear in Motavia's ocean, the Ismounos appears in Bio-Plant, and Depcen appears in Desert Motavia island's and East Motavian Shores.The way the Depcens aren't powerful, I remember one hitting Chaz for about 180 damage a few years ago when I was playing, I have no clue how or I might have been reading it wrong.

One more thing, I really wonder this about the Earthquake attack, what factor/element does it use ? Also If a character that is playable could use Earthquake, I wonder what It would look like, maybe them putting their hand out and a brown aura coming from their hand and the screen shakes slightly ?

OK this will be the last thing, what is a Wave-Bar ? I've seen in the Unused Oddites Video of yours.

[ladyabaxa.livejournal.com]

It's a shield that doesn't exist in the vanilla game. I put it in as part of my shop hack to round out the elemental resistances in shields. It replaces item NOTHING 2. That item in the vanilla game it is, to quote Fresh Feeling, "The second one I'd never heard of before. It appears to be equippable by everyone except Seth, except that it is a plot item. It offers some defense and magic defense. That's all."

In other words it was originally a dummied out shield-like thing that I dummied back in. I haven't used it in any of my solo runs but it is there along with a couple other item tweaks in the interest of game balance with the party select hack.

As for Earthquake that's a physical/factor 1 attack. If it were placed on a character's movelist the game would probably crash if you tried to use it. PSIV is pretty picky about that stuff due to the way animations are programmed.

[shining-armour.livejournal.com]

Oh, by everyone but Seth, does he mean androids can equip with ? http://s31.photobucket.com/user/abaxa/media/Phantasy%20Star%204/haxxors/PS4_item-text-3.png.html?sort=4&o=4 Is that the description for the Wave-Viewer ? Was that a removed item ? Or did you make it yourself ? Also, I never heard of a baker that sells Bright Gems that reveal planets, nor dynamite or Shotguns, Lol.

Also, if it was a plot-item the Wave Barrier, would it be like the Silver-Tusk or Elysdeon ? Also does it have a use in Battle ? It would be amazing if it had a use in battle, like Barrier or an Infinite-Moon Dew use, anyway...

Also it shows the Wave-Viewer (I think ?) can be used on people, if it only costs 100 Meseta, it must be a bad shield.

Also in the party select hack, I heard about the Shotgun and Ceramic Axe (isn't Ceramic stronger than Titanium, though ?)


http://s31.photobucket.com/user/abaxa/media/Phantasy%20Star%204/haxxors/PS4_item-text-6.png.html?sort=4&o=7 Interesting bakery, An Axe wield by Evil-Warriors, A Gun found in a advanced building, Armour found an another planet XD

OK, Enough with bakeries! Just a question about Party-Select Hack, What Level does Raja learn his spells before you get him in the vanilla game, I know he learns St.Fire at 23,Seals at 20, Miracle at Level 19, , Holyword at Level 9, GiRes at 8, So What level does he learn Ataraxia, Anti, Rimpa, Rever and Sar ?

Also, I still have more, how do Androids learn their skills they have when you get them in the game ? Do you learn them ?

Also, what level does Seth learn MindBlast and Holyword, if you've already learned them.

Also, if you went to fight Alys (the illusion in the Anger Tower) with someone other than Chaz, like Raja or Rika, would they learn the thing, also, If Wren was at level 99, with Barrier up tons of Repair Dews, I am pretty sure he could win against Re-Faze since the damage with Barrier up would losen the Megid, It would still do alot, since Re-Faze has a blazing 597 metal.

One more thing, If Gryz was going to be able to wield knives, maybe he was going to have a skill Crosscut or his own skill ?

One last thing, what factor is that thing Super Sonic ? The skill Dezo-Owls and Biter Flies use.

The final thing, I promise, if you hacked in Cancelling in a movelist, would it work ? I mean you wouldn't use it a lot, but it would be nice.

Final question, is there a way for Chaz's Megid to look the Profound Darkness' Megid ?

Yeah, I am curious a lot about things...

[shining-armour.livejournal.com]

Hahn seems like to most interesting solo in this game! And a very challenging, and also balanced, he is not the best healer as Raja, but Raja has only 1 offensive spell, while Hahn can use NaWat, NaRes and Astral, Rune on the other hand, he is made of magic, and he has the best thing ever, Negatis! And the biggest mental growth, so his spells do about 100-400 damage! But has no healing methods (unless you count Rever).But Hahn has accurate spells, healing and damaging spells, sure he can't over 600 damage to the Profound Darkness like Chaz (yes, he can do this much if you're level maybe about 80), but he has balanced spells.

Also yes, Stasism Ball is annoying.

[ladyabaxa.livejournal.com]

This is just a quick note to say I edited all of Hahn's posts to correct some typos and general minor errors.